Jim Geraghty writes for National Review Online about one person associated with the US Supreme Court who ought to retire.
[A]t the court, the decision that I found most surprising was the one by NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg to report, erroneously, that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had announced his retirement. There’s a long overdue retirement at the Court, but it is not Alito’s. …
… No one else at NPR thought it was weird that no other news organization was running its own bulletins about Alito’s retirement, huh? …
… She heard the word “retirement” and just assumed that it was Alito? …
… Totenberg is 82. She has covered the Supreme Court since I was born, and I have a kid in college. Also, in the 1970s, Totenberg became close personal friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and one might think that a close personal friendship with someone you cover professionally is a major conflict of interest that ought to be disclosed to listeners, but “her friendship with Ginsburg was almost never mentioned in the hundreds of news stories, interviews and features Totenberg has done about the court over the years.”
Another one of Totenberg’s greatest hits, this one targeted at the late Senator Jesse Helms (R., N.C.): “In 1995, on the syndicated political television program Inside Washington, guests including Totenberg turned to a proposal by the North Carolina senator that Congress reduce spending on AIDS research. Totenberg said, ‘I think he ought to be worried about the — about what’s going on in the good Lord’s mind, because if there’s retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion or one of his grandchildren will get it.’” Wishing painful death upon the family of people you disagree with is the kind of comment we’ve come to expect from unhinged hatemongers. …
… Apparently, nothing matters when you’re on the left side of the aisle. Just do whatever you want, and there will never be any consequences.
